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Authors: Linda Bird Francke
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in the buff (or wearing a hair shirt, by some accounts), Francis then proceeded to sever all ties with his father in what has to be one of the greatest renunciation scenes of all time. Addressing the gawking and surely tittering crowd, Francis called out: “Listen all of you, and mark my words. Hitherto I have called Pietro Bernadone my father. But because I am resolved to serve God, I return to him the money on account of which he was so perturbed, and also the clothes I wore which are his; and from now on I will say ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ and not Father Pietro di Bernadone.”
What a devastating moment for Pietro. His son renouncing him as a father. For all of Assisi to see and hear. The son he had fed and clothed, the son he had ransomed from prison in Perugia, the son he had outfitted in vain as a knight, trained in his shop, maybe even loved. This same ungrateful son now telling him in front of his neighbors and customers that he, Pietro, was no longer his father. And doing it naked.
Pietro presumably did not dwell on the symbolism of his son’s nudity, whether it was Francis’s emulation of Christ on the cross or his more literal return to his first birth, marking the beginning of his second. All Pietro saw was red. “His father rose up burning with grief and anger,” the
Three Companions
continues, gathered up the clothes and the bag of money, pushed his way through the hooting crowd, and went home.
The mood of the crowd evidently shifted with Pietro’s abrupt departure. Suddenly it was he who became the object of collective scorn, for taking away his son’s clothes and leaving him standing there, shivering and naked, in the piazza. Francis’s biographers, whose sources were presumably not present at what they call “the spectacle,” claim that the same crowd which had jeered Francis minutes before—and would again—was moved to tears of “piety” by his predicament. It would fall to Bishop Guido to calm the crowd and end the “spectacle” by stepping forward and enveloping Francis in his mantle.
This act, too, was given spiritual meaning. With Francis’s rejection of his earthly father and his embrace of an adopted heavenly father, it could only follow that the bishop would interpret the “spectacle” as “prompted by divine counsel,” and not human theater. From that moment, Francis’s biographers universally agree, the bishop of Assisi “became his helper, exhorting, encouraging, loving and embracing him with the depths of his charity.”
Standing in the Piazza del Vescovado, I try to figure out just where the dramatic confrontation took place. In front of the old cathedral? Around the fountain? Then, on the wall of the bishop’s residence, I see a handwritten sign,
“Aperto”
(Open), for the Libreria Fonteviva inside the courtyard. We follow it to what turns out to be a spiritual bookstore. “Do you know where Francis renounced his father?” I ask the woman behind the desk and am stunned when she replies matter-of-factly: “In the next room, the Sala del Trono. Come. I’ll show you.” And with that, she unlocks the door and turns on the light in what looks like a conference room, fitted out with long tables, chairs, microphones—and a velvet throne for the bishop. “Right here?” I say incredulously. “Right here,” she replies, explaining that the piazza had been larger in Francis’s time and the room had been built over it.
I am dumbfounded, standing on the exact spot where Francis had stood over eight hundred years ago and handed over his worldly goods to his father to start a new life. A huge painting of the scene covers the far wall of the Throne Room, which is hardly surprising. That same renunciation scene has been re-created not only by Giotto in the basilica but by every other artist and filmmaker attempting to document Francis’s life. But there I am, physically, at the heart of the family saga, which suddenly feels very real.
What Francis did next
What a devastating moment for Pietro. His son renouncing him as a father. For all of Assisi to see and hear. The son he had fed and clothed, the son he had ransomed from prison in Perugia, the son he had outfitted in vain as a knight, trained in his shop, maybe even loved. This same ungrateful son now telling him in front of his neighbors and customers that he, Pietro, was no longer his father. And doing it naked.
Pietro presumably did not dwell on the symbolism of his son’s nudity, whether it was Francis’s emulation of Christ on the cross or his more literal return to his first birth, marking the beginning of his second. All Pietro saw was red. “His father rose up burning with grief and anger,” the
Three Companions
continues, gathered up the clothes and the bag of money, pushed his way through the hooting crowd, and went home.
The mood of the crowd evidently shifted with Pietro’s abrupt departure. Suddenly it was he who became the object of collective scorn, for taking away his son’s clothes and leaving him standing there, shivering and naked, in the piazza. Francis’s biographers, whose sources were presumably not present at what they call “the spectacle,” claim that the same crowd which had jeered Francis minutes before—and would again—was moved to tears of “piety” by his predicament. It would fall to Bishop Guido to calm the crowd and end the “spectacle” by stepping forward and enveloping Francis in his mantle.
This act, too, was given spiritual meaning. With Francis’s rejection of his earthly father and his embrace of an adopted heavenly father, it could only follow that the bishop would interpret the “spectacle” as “prompted by divine counsel,” and not human theater. From that moment, Francis’s biographers universally agree, the bishop of Assisi “became his helper, exhorting, encouraging, loving and embracing him with the depths of his charity.”
Standing in the Piazza del Vescovado, I try to figure out just where the dramatic confrontation took place. In front of the old cathedral? Around the fountain? Then, on the wall of the bishop’s residence, I see a handwritten sign,
“Aperto”
(Open), for the Libreria Fonteviva inside the courtyard. We follow it to what turns out to be a spiritual bookstore. “Do you know where Francis renounced his father?” I ask the woman behind the desk and am stunned when she replies matter-of-factly: “In the next room, the Sala del Trono. Come. I’ll show you.” And with that, she unlocks the door and turns on the light in what looks like a conference room, fitted out with long tables, chairs, microphones—and a velvet throne for the bishop. “Right here?” I say incredulously. “Right here,” she replies, explaining that the piazza had been larger in Francis’s time and the room had been built over it.
I am dumbfounded, standing on the exact spot where Francis had stood over eight hundred years ago and handed over his worldly goods to his father to start a new life. A huge painting of the scene covers the far wall of the Throne Room, which is hardly surprising. That same renunciation scene has been re-created not only by Giotto in the basilica but by every other artist and filmmaker attempting to document Francis’s life. But there I am, physically, at the heart of the family saga, which suddenly feels very real.
What Francis did next
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